Conceptual Biology and Medicine
The goal of our interdisciplinary team is to explore the conceptual and foundational bases of today’s biology and medicine. We reach this aim through what we call ‘Philosophy in biology’, an innovative way to combine the contributions of philosophy of biology, experimental biology, computational biology, and medical biology. We are focused first and
foremost on the immune system, cancer, aging, and the microbiome, although we also work on conceptual issues related to evolutionary biology, ecology, developmental biology, physiology, and the medical sciences in general. Our goal is to intervene in decisions that precede experiments, in order to maximize the chances of results.
- Head : Thomas Pradeu & Maël Lemoine
- Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS UMR5164
Discover
Our research activity is divided into five axes. These axes do not represent disjoint subgroups, but rather thematic foci to which all team members may contribute at different times and to varying degrees. The first axis (“Conceptual Immunology”) investigates core concepts of immunology and puts forward an alternative view of the immune system beyond the idea of host defense. The second axis (“Cancer”) is dedicated to a deeper understanding of cancer that takes into account the role of the microenvironment, the evolutionary context, and the possible links to processes involved in aging. The third axis (“How aging causes age-related diseases”) addresses major conceptual problems concerning the mechanisms of aging and their relationship to age-related diseases. The fourth axis ( “Computational methods in biology and medicine”) aims at developing a conceptual framework to understand and facilitate the integration of computational methods in the biomedical sciences, notably in the context of immunology. Finally, the fifth axis (“Microbiome: symbiosis, immunity, and cancer”) proposes new theoretical tools to study the symbiotic relationships between organisms and their microbial communities.
Our team is a pillar of the Institute for Philosophy in Biology and Medicine (PhilInBioMed), an interdisciplinary institute located at the University of Bordeaux, France, and a national and international network of interdisciplinary institutes. PhilInBioMed aims at promoting philosophy in the biological and medical sciences.

Conceptual immunology
Cancer
How aging causes age-related diseases
Computational methods in biology and medicine
Microbiome: symbiosis, immunity, and cancer
Publications
- Guerville, F, Bourdel-Marchasson, I, Déchanet-Merville, J, Pellegrin, I, Soubeyran, P, Appay, V et al.. Does Inflammation Contribute to Cancer Incidence and Mortality during Aging? A Conceptual Review. Cancers (Basel). 2022;14 (7):. doi: 10.3390/cancers14071622. PubMed PMID:35406394 PubMed Central PMC8996949.
- Sepich-Poore, GD, Guccione, C, Laplane, L, Pradeu, T, Curtius, K, Knight, R et al.. Cancer’s second genome: Microbial cancer diagnostics and redefining clonal evolution as a multispecies process: Humans and their tumors are not aseptic, and the multispecies nature of cancer modulates clinical care and clonal evolution: Humans and their tumors are not aseptic, and the multispecies nature of cancer modulates clinical care and clonal evolution. Bioessays. 2022;44 (5):e2100252. doi: 10.1002/bies.202100252. PubMed PMID:35253252 .
- Laurent, P, Lapoirie, J, Leleu, D, Levionnois, E, Grenier, C, Jurado-Mestre, B et al.. Interleukin-1β-Activated Microvascular Endothelial Cells Promote DC-SIGN-Positive Alternatively Activated Macrophages as a Mechanism of Skin Fibrosis in Systemic Sclerosis. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2021; :. doi: 10.1002/art.42061. PubMed PMID:34962361 .
- Sholl, J, Sepich-Poore, GD, Knight, R, Pradeu, T. Redrawing therapeutic boundaries: microbiota and cancer. Trends Cancer. 2022;8 (2):87-97. doi: 10.1016/j.trecan.2021.10.008. PubMed PMID:34844910 PubMed Central PMC8770609.
- Kaminski, H, Lemoine, M, Pradeu, T. Immunological exhaustion: How to make a disparate concept operational?. PLoS Pathog. 2021;17 (9):e1009892. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1009892. PubMed PMID:34555119 PubMed Central PMC8460019.
- Lemoine, M. The Evolution of the Hallmarks of Aging. Front Genet. 2021;12 :693071. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.693071. PubMed PMID:34512720 PubMed Central PMC8427668.
Past members
- Imane BARBARA (Now Project Manager in Strasbourg)
- Leonardo BICH (Now Ramon y Cajal senior researcher at the University of the Basque Country, Spain)
- Wiebke BRETTING (Now Project Manager in a Bordeaux hospital-hosted project)
- Lynn CHIU (Now Media and Communications Officer, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) & Extended Evolutionary Synthesis research project, University of St. Andrews)
- Nicolas DUSSECH (Intern in Biology)
- Gregor GRESLEHNER (Now Lecturer at the University of Vienna)
- Katarzyna HOOKS (Now Postdoctoral researcher)
- Valérie JOLIVEL (Now Associate Professor of Biology in Strasbourg)
- Paôline LAURENT (Now Postdoctoral researcher in New York)
- Maureen O’MALLEY (Now Senior researcher at the University of Sydney)
- Elena RONDEAU (PhD student w/ T. Pradeu, 2017-2021, now Lecturer at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Lyon)
- Derek SKILLINGS (Now Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UNC Greensboro, USA)
Recent visitors
- Mina BISSELL, Professor of Biology, University of Berkeley, USA.
- Peter GODFREY-SMITH, Professor in Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Australia
- Deborah GORDON, Professor of Biology, Stanford University, USA
- Paul GRIFFITHS, Professor in Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Australia
- Fridolin GROSS, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Kassel, Germany
- Valerie HARDCASTLE, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, University of Cincinnati, USA
- Alberto MANTOVANI, Professor of Medicine, Humanitas, Italy.
- Jacob STEGENGA, Lecturer in Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, UK
- Adrian STENCEL, PhD Student Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
- Martin ZACH (visiting PhD student from Oct.-Dec. 2019 and will be an EPSA Fellow in our team in the near future)
- Javier SUAREZ, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Bielefeld, Germany
Funding






